Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says the movements of a missing plane were consistent with a deliberate act by someone who turned the jet back across Malaysia and onwards to the west. Sarah Toms reports.

Reuters

15 Mar 2014

News/World

Search expands to 25 countries with new leads

Captain was ‘obsessive’ supporter of Anwar Ibrahim

Zaharie Shah’s flight simulator at home seized

Co-pilot also under fresh scrutiny

THE search for Flight MH370 is expanding after officials obtained new leads from their investigation into the missing plane.

Malaysia’s Defence and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said information released yesterday “has provided new leads, and given new direction to the search process”.

At a press conference, he confirmed officers from the Royal Malaysia Police visited the home of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

They spoke to family members of the pilot and experts are examining the pilot’s home-made flight simulator. They have dismantled and re-assembled it at another location.

“We are asking countries that have satellite assets, including the US, China and France amongst others, to provide further satellite data,” he said.

“And we are contacting additional countries who may be able to contribute specific assets relevant to the search and rescue operation. Surveillance aircraft are required, and maritime vessels are needed, particularly for the southern corridor.

“We are currently discussing with all partners how best to deploy assets along the two search corridors. At this stage, both the northern and southern corridors are being treated with equal importance.”

Malaysian Police Chief Khalid Abu Bakar also added that background checks on the entire passenger manifest was not complete yet.

“We have not yet received background checks on all passengers from all countries on flight,” he said.

When asked if there was anything suspicious in the plane’s cargo manifest, officials said there was nothing hazardous.

The latest developments in the investigation come as FBI investigators also said the disappearance of MH370 may have been “an act of piracy” and that the possibility that its hundreds of passengers are being held at an unknown location has not been ruled out.

AL-QAEDA PROBE AFTER LINK TO MALAYSIAN TERROR PLOT

As police probe how Flight MH370 was possibly hijacked, British media are speculating the plane’s disappearance could also be linked to al-Qaeda.

A plot created by Malaysian Islamists to hijack the Malaysia Airlines plane in a 9/11-style attack is being investigated, The UK’s Daily Telegraph reports.

It comes after al-Qaeda informant Saajid Badat, a British-born Muslim from Gloucester, told a court that a group of Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door.

Security experts said his evidence was “credible”.

Badat said that he had met the Malaysian jihadists – one of whom was a pilot – in Afghanistan and given them a shoe bomb to use to take control of an aircraft.

In giving evidence at the trial in New York of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Badat said: “I gave one of my shoes to the Malaysians. I think it was to access the cockpit.”

Badat, who spoke via video link, said the Malaysian plot was being masterminded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was behind the 9/11 attack in the US in 2001.

The alleged links to al-Qaeda come as Prime Minister Razak said the Royal Malaysia Police are investigating all crew and passengers on board MH370, as well as engineers who may have had contact with the aircraft before take-off.

The latest information about the search comes after India suspended its search for the plane around the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands and in the Bay of Bengal until they got fresh instructions.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that two RAAF aircraft helping search for the missing Malaysian airliner will also shift their focus to the Indian Ocean.

Mr Abbott also said that Australia is also prepared to provide any more assistance the Malaysian government might seek.

‘‘I am certainly very satisfied with the security arrangements we currently have.”

FLIGHT MH370 CAPTAIN AND CO-PILOTS INVESTIGATED

Meanwhile, the pilot and co-pilot of missing Flight MH370 are being newly investigated after Malaysia’s Prime Minister confirmed “deliberate actions” are behind the plane’s disappearance.

The US intelligence community is leaning towards the theory that “those in the cockpit” - pilot Captain Zaharie Shah and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul - were deliberately responsible for whatever happened to the plane, a US official told CNN.

According to British media reports, police are investigating the possibility that Captain Shah hijacked his own aircraft in a political protest.

The pilot was a political fanatic and “obsessive” supporter of Malaysia’s opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, The Mail on Sunday says.

Looking for clues ... police have searched the home of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah.Source: Facebook

Hours before Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur, the pilot is said to have attended a controversial trial in which Ibrahim - who has been harassed and jailed on successive charges of homosexuality and sodomy - was jailed for five years.

Police sources say Captain Shah was a political activist and fear that the court decision left him profoundly upset.

Whoever took control of the plane and deliberately flew it off course had an extensive knowledge of aircraft systems – and in all likelihood no one on board had as much expertise as Captain Shah.

A self-declared “aviation geek”, Captain Shah, 53, even had his own flight simulator at home and flew remote-controlled planes as a hobby.

In a worrying lapse of security, Fariq smoked, took photos and entertained passengers Jonti Roos and Jaan Maree in the cabin on a one-hour flight from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur.

The son of a high-ranking official in the public works department of a Malaysian state, Fariq joined Malaysia Airlines when he was 20.

He is a mild-mannered “good boy’’ who regularly visited his neighbourhood mosque outside Kuala Lumpur, said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader.

The far more seasoned Zaharie joined MAS in 1981 and had logged 18,365 hours of flying time.

Malaysian media reports quoted colleagues calling Zaharie a “superb pilot’’, who also served as an examiner, authorised by the Malaysian Civil Aviation Department, to conduct simulator tests for pilots.

Prime Minister Najib Razak last night made the startling revelation that the last communication with the Malaysia Airlines flight was at 8.11am last Saturday - seven hours later than originally thought. At that point, the plane may have run out of fuel, he said.

The transponder of MH370 was switched off around the time analysts said it would have reached its cruising altitude, when pilots often emerge to take a bathroom or coffee break.

Mr Najib said the plane’s precise location remained unclear but had been narrowed down to two areas - a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkestan into northern Thailand and a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean, including off the WA.

However, authorities stopped short of saying the plane was hijacked.

“Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked I wish to be very clear we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path,” Mr Najib said.

Searching for answers ... a Chinese relative of a passenger on board the missing plane at a press conference at a hotel in Beijing.Source: AP

PUBLIC BACKLASH AS OFFICIALS WITHOLD INFORMATION

Chinese relatives of missing passengers reacted in anger to confirmation that the plane had flown on for seven hours after communication systems were switched off.

And China slammed Malaysia for taking seven days to make the information public, ratcheted up its criticism in news commentary saying either a “dereliction of duty or reluctance to share information” was to blame.

Malaysia Airlines said it had not gone public with information that the plane continued to fly for hours after last contact because it needed time to confirm the satellite data.

Meanwhile, claims that a 35-year-old Uighur man from China’s troubled autonomous Muslim province was on Flight MH370 may be looked at in a new light. The group claimed responsibility earlier this week but were dismissed as opportunitistic and not credible, but Malaysian reports now say the passenger had taken flight-simulator training in 2005.

More confusion as a woman writes on a board of messages dedicated to the plane’s passengers and crew.Source: AP